Extinct

by Hamill, Ike

  “We’ll just be a second,” Robby said. The porch was covered and wide enough for a swing, but all the furniture had been removed for the winter. Robby put his hand on the railing and lowered himself to the cold brick steps. He sat on the second step and leaned back to look up at the sky. Brad brushed the dusting of snow from his side of the steps and then sat next to Robby. Behind them, Pete and Lisa went back inside and closed the door.

  Brad glanced over at Robby. The young man looked wind-burned and tired.

  “So the dead rose and walked through a portal to the afterlife. What crazy things we’ve seen. Do you think it worked? Do you think bringing all the dead bodies up to the light worked?” Brad asked.

  “I don’t know,” Robby said. “I guess it depends on what we were trying to do.”

  “I thought the point was to drive that thing off the planet,” Brad said. “I thought we would poison it and it would go away.”

  “Yeah,” Robby said. “I guess I expected…” Robby squinted as the sun peeked out from behind a scraggly blanket of clouds. He stared at the sun even as it left blue-yellow trails across his retinas. Tears welled up and spilled from the corners of his squinted eyes.

  “Come on,” Brad said. He tapped Robby on the shoulder. “Let’s go in and see what they brought back to eat.”

  “You go,” Robby said. “I’ll be there in a second.”

  “Okay,” Brad said. He stood slowly and followed Robby’s eyes back up to the patch of blue sky. He shielded his eyes from the sun and looked at the edge of the clouds. They were definitely receding—the clouds moved back like they were evaporating away from the patch of blue, rather than blowing away. Brad went inside and closed the door behind him.

  Robby sat on the porch and stared at the sky.

  He sat motionless until his shivering legs and icy feet drove him inside.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  THEY EACH DROVE their own snowmobile, although they could have easily fit on two. Robby and Pete rode side-by-side in the lead and were followed at a reasonable distance by Lisa and Brad. Each sled carried an extra gas can and bag of gear strapped to the back. Lisa insisted on the safety precautions. She’d grown cautious in the weeks since their last trip north. She would say, “No sense in surviving the apocalypse just to die of food poisoning,” or, “… just to die of pneumonia.” The others humored her and each drove their own snowmobile, capable of enduring hundreds of miles and a week of camping with all the supplies she’d packed.

  Pete held up a gloved hand and waved to the others before he slowed down. They had travelled about halfway along the tracks north to where they’d seen the ball of light. The sun burned bright in a flawless blue sky above them.

  “I think it’s melting,” Pete said, pointing west towards the hills. The perfect white blanket of snow was dirtied off in the distance by the shapes of bare treetops poking through at the crest of a hill.

  The group had monitored the snowpack carefully back in Portland. Although the sun was out and it seemed warmer outside, the snow hadn’t receded or melted at all from the roads.

  “Seems like it’s a little softer, too,” Brad said. He was stomping his left foot into the grainy snow to the side of packed tracks from the tractors they’d driven through weeks before.

  “We’d do best to space ourselves out a bit, in case it gets unstable up ahead. You guys give me about a twenty second lead before you follow. You’ll have enough time to stop if I break through,” Pete said. “I’ll trail a line.” He rifled through the bag Lisa packed and came up with a long rope meant for rock climbers. Pete looped it around his shoulders and produced a harness before he tossed the slack into the snow.

  “Now don’t run over my line, or I’m gonna wind up on my ass,” Pete said. When he spun his throttle and left the group behind, his bundle of rope flopped and danced behind him, playing itself out. Robby accelerated too, following the line and staying careful to give it enough distance so he wouldn’t accidentally run over the rope.

  The snow became mushier, the farther north they traveled. The runners of the snowmobiles sank deeper, and the machines became harder to turn and seemed to slog through the sugary snow. Robby heard the engine of his machine labor and sputter as he managed his speed to stay in sight of Pete’s trailing rope.

  The group saw the still shapes of the tractors and sleds resting on the ice. The wind had caught a blue tarp and wrapped it around the cab of the second tractor.

  Robby saw the depression in the ice when Pete’s snowmobile disappeared over the edge and descended out of sight. He stopped short of the edge, next to a tractor, where the end of Pete’s rope had stopped moving. Scrambling from his machine, Robby leaped and grabbed for the end of the rope. The rope pulled through his gloved grip.

  Brad and Lisa pulled up at the same time as Robby scrambled after the end of the rope.

  “Help me,” Robby yelled back to Lisa. “I think Pete’s is going into the light.”

  Robby’s second lunge brought his hands around the end of the slithering rope. He rose to his knees and pulled, but the rope jerked him forward until his elbows landed in the snow and ice. Lisa grabbed Robby’s ankles and Brad ran around the young man to get his own hands on the rope.

  Brad and Robby looped their hands around the rope and Lisa clutched Robby’s legs to anchor him on the wet snow.

  When the rope when slack, Brad fell backwards and landed in the snow next to Robby’s outstretched arms. They pulled at the line, feeling very little resistance, and accumulated a pile of rope behind them.

  Pete crested the hill, coming towards them at a jog.

  “What are you doing?” Pete yelled. “You about tugged me off my feet.”

  Lisa, Brad, and Robby stood up and brushed wet snow from their clothes.

  “We didn’t want you to walk into the light,” Robby said.

  Pete approached the others while untying the rope harness.

  “What light?” he asked, smiling.

  “It’s gone?” Brad asked.

  “Go look,” Pete said. “There’s nothing down there but a bare patch of mud. I was going to look at it when you guys pulled me back.”

  Brad strode off towards the bowl without another word.

  “Be careful,” Lisa called after him.

  Pete finished untying himself and began to loop the rope around his arm—coiling it to stow in his bag.

  “Go look,” Pete said again.

  “When Brad comes back,” Robby said.

  “Yes,” Lisa said. “One at a time.”

  The each took a turn, trudging through the snow and slush, down the icy slope to the mud where the giant ball of light had sat. Robby found a plastic comb, and brought it back up the hill like a piece of litter he meant to throw away. When Pete went back over the edge, he came back on his snowmobile, pulling it alongside the others and killing the engine.

  “I think we did it,” Pete said. “I think it’s completely gone, and it looks like the snow is starting to melt around here.”

  “Is it safe?" Lisa asked. “We’re basically standing on a big slab of ice which may be melting from underneath.”

  “I don’t think there’s imminent danger, but I wouldn’t want to camp out or anything,” Pete said.

  Without discussing the matter, the four walked to the edge and took one last look down into the crater formed in the ice and snow. Lisa said “Oh!” and pulled out a camera to take a picture for Romie.

  “I think my house used to be right around here,” Brad said. He spun an surveyed, but the landmarks were still buried under the snow and ice. They turned and walked back to their snowmobiles. The ride south passed quickly under their treads.

  They walked the last couple of miles back to the house, finding some of the crunchy snow finally melting in the sun. Back at the house, Romie had moved some folding chairs out to the porch and she sat in the light of the setting sun reading a book. She closed the book on her finger as the others climbed the stairs to join her on the porc
h.

  “Good trip?” Romie asked.

  “Great trip,” Pete said. “The big ball of light is gone. Snow is melting.” He beamed his approval.

  “I’ve got good news for you guys, too,” Romie said. She stood and leaned over the railing, pointing at a small patch of snow in the shadow of an evergreen bush. The group gathered at the railing and followed her pointing finger. Robby gasped and Pete clapped his hands when they saw what she saw: tiny paw-prints tracked through the melting snow.

  “What are they from?” Brad asked.

  “Looks like a cat,” Pete said. “Did you see it?”

  “Nope,” Romie said. “But they weren’t there this morning. I’m sure of it.”

  “That’s the first sign of life since, well since Thanksgiving,” Pete said.

  “Aside from us,” Lisa said.

  Pete nodded.

  “Shhh!” Brad said. “Look!” He directed their gaze upwards, to the leafless branches of a maple tree in the yard.

  They were looking for a cat, so it took a second for the sight to register.

  “Bird!” Robby said. “I see it.”

  They all saw it when he pointed.

  The bird, a fat chickadee, perched at the end of a thin branch and twisted its head rapidly, back and forth.

  Lisa brought her hands to her mouth. Pete laughed out loud.

  “You think the cat was after the bird?" Romie asked. She giggled and then covered her mouth, too.

  The chickadee turned towards the group, eyeing them as if it understood. It emitted a single cheep, and then fluttered from the branch. The bird only flew a couple of feet.

  Just after taking off from its perch, the little bird jerked backwards and then vanished.

  The group heard a tiny pop, and watched a single feather seesaw its way to the ground.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  AS THE SUN SET on Portland, everything was quiet. In the yards, the melting snow was absorbed into the faded winter grass. In the streets, the puddles sent off runners to follow the curbs into the storm drains. With only a dusting of snow in town, Portland’s winter was dry, and the spring plants would suffer. But spring was still weeks away from this quiet sunset.

  Up a gentle slope from Back Cove, past a large grocery store, a house looked east with the sun at its back. The patches of unmelted snow were crisscrossed with footprints, and furniture sat on the covered porch. From the outside, no movement could be seen. In the basement, next to the washing machine and dryer, and beside the furnace, five people huddled.

  Romie broke the silence—“What the hell do we do now?”

  “What happened to that bird?” Pete asked.

  “I think it was vaporized,” Robby said. “Like all the people on Thanksgiving. I think it was snatched.”

  “If you ask me, someone shot it,” Lisa said.

  “Nope,” Brad said. “There was no gunshot. I heard a little pop, but that bird just jerked back and disappeared. I didn’t see any of the people get snatched on Thanksgiving, but I’m confident that’s what happened. We may have driven off that ball of light, but some of the goblins it brought along are still active.”

  “But we saw the cat’s paw prints. And that’s the first bird we’ve seen in months. Things have to be getting better,” Romie said.

  “Perhaps getting there, but we’re not out of the woods yet,” Pete said. “We still don’t know why we were spared and everyone else disappeared or got their eyes popped out. I think we need to head south.”

  “We could go to upstate New York, and catch up with Luke’s group,” Lisa said.

  Robby, their young leader, examined the face of each person.

  “Do we all agree?” Robby asked.

  They all nodded.

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